A somewhat different and largely disappointing view from the house this morning – Torrential rain instead of our usual blue sky sunrise! Climbing was now well and truly off the menu, so we shifted our attention towards a relaxing indoor morning of reading, eating and drinking…

The afternoon weather at the nearby coast was looking more favourable, so we took the short drive down the hill to Stomio Beach (a little further south than Kymi). Here we found a little bit of blue sky and a deserted coastal line.

There was a decent on-shore breeze keeping the temperatures down and making the water a bit too choppy to entice us in. On a calm day it must be pretty nice down here. Still, we managed a 1.5km hike along the waters edge and back, which felt like a major milestone for Clare. Our map has a road marked along the waters edge, but it’s been mostly washed away by the sea! Good job we didn’t follow google maps too closely!

On the drive back to the house, we stopped to admire an enormous olive tree….

A sign nearby, said it’s the oldest tree on the island (we are staying on an island called Evia – joined to the mainland by a big bridge), and one of the oldest trees in Greece and estimated to be around 2700 years old! An un-fathomable length of time! The trunk is some 15m in diameter and it’s still producing plenty of olives after all these years.

Back at our house, we turned down the offer of some more home cooked food from our host (as we’d bought food to cook), and finished the last of the big cake we’d been given on arrival.

Before it went dark and the next shower of rain passed overhead, we still made use of the balcony (with warm jackets on) for a pre-dinner drink before hunkering down in the warmth of inside…